Something Rhymes with Purple - Auld Reekie

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

In this week's episode, Susie & Gyles are taking a stroll down the linguistic lanes of the 'Edinburgh Fringe’, tracing its linguistic roots and exploring how this cultural extravaganza got its quirky name. Join us on a journey through words and time as we uncover the intricate tapestry of language evolution." We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Philostorgie: The love of parents towards their children Nastify: To make nasty Routineer: One who lives according to a routine. Gyles' poem this week was ‘The Land of Nod’ by ’Robert Louis Stevenson’ From breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do — All alone beside the streams And up the mountain-sides of dreams. The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, And many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod. Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, Nor can remember plain and clear The curious music that I hear. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. My name is Giles Brandreth and this week I find myself in Edinburgh. My co-host is Susie Dent, in my view the world's leading lexicographer, and she is normally based in Oxford. Where are you in fact today, Susie? Yes, I wish I could tell you somewhere different because whenever you ask me this, I'm still in the same place, but it is one of my favourite places, I have to say. I'm surrounded by my dictionaries, my books. I still have, you can probably see this, Giles, but on my sofa behind me, I still have a birthday balloon that is almost a year old and it's still nestling there

on the sofa as a little bit of pink decoration. So that's where I am. But I know you are somewhere far more exciting. Well, it's not very exciting, the room I'm in. I'm in a flat in a part of Edinburgh called Quarter Mile, which was where I think the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary used to be. And then about 20 years ago, they began developing this area. And it's a wonderful mixture of modern buildings created, I think, by the Richard Rogers Partnership and old buildings, Victorian buildings.

And the combination of ancient and modern works beautifully well. And the reason I'm here, and I'm not surrounded by balloons, but I am surrounded by flowers because I've been given so many wonderful bunches of flowers while I've been here. Oh, people throwing them onto the stage.

Well, come onto that because they have literally, I've had presents at every single performance so far. I'm here in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and I'm performing in a show every day until four o'clock. It's ending quite soon. And in fact, probably by the time this goes out, the Festival Fringe will be over, but there's always next year,

and I'm taking my show on tour. But Edinburgh is a city in August transformed. After the Second World War, the good people of Edinburgh had an idea. Let's try, the war is over, let's try and revive the culture, the arts, the heritage of Edinburgh. And they created this big international festival in 1947, with huge companies from around the world coming to Edinburgh to perform theatre, opera, art. And with this first festival, it was very grand and quite important, but there were people who turned up who were not quite so grand or so important and decided to create on the fringes of the main festival, their own festival, a Fringe Festival. And now, all these years later, literally 77 years later, the festival goes on, the International Festival, but the Fringe, that was a small part of it,

is now the biggest part of it. And so I'm part of the Fringe, and now literally I'm one of 3,517 different shows that have been performing at the Fringe. And you can go to a show at eight in the morning, and literally at two the following morning, on the hour, on the half hour, throughout the day, and in big venues like the one I am in called the Gordon Aikman Theatre in George Square, big venue like that, a 500 seater. Or you could be literally almost in an old letterbox. Certainly, there are sort of small rooms in pubs where people put on shows. And why it's so wonderful, and why people come is that it welcomes every kind of performer, every kind of talent. So there are old codgers like me, I may be the oldest person on the

fringe, until five years ago, the oldest person on the fringe every year was my friend, Nicholas Parsons, a very established British broadcaster and entertainer, and known around the world because he hosted the program Just a Minute for Radio 4, which was broadcast around the world, which he hosted for more than 50 years. But he did a show on the fringe every year until he was 95 years of age. So you have him at one end, and at the other end, you have children coming and performing. And you have shows for children, magic shows, puppet shows, musicals for children, but you have children coming and performing. And you have shows for children, magic shows, puppet shows, musicals for children, but you have teenagers performing. You have a lot of university

students. In the venue I'm at, I'm on every day at four, but just before me at 2.30 are a dozen young men from Oxford University who sing a cappella. And their voices are extraordinary. They've been a huge hit. I think they're called something like the Dark Blues. Anyway, they sing sensationally. So you've got students, university students. You've got amateur groups, professional groups. You've got solo acts.

You've got fire eaters. I met the most wonderful person called Heather Burns, who swallows swords. She is one of 150 or so street entertainers. She's one of only six female street entertainers. She swallows a sword. She let me pull the sword, ooh, out of her mouth. So did Heather explain to you how she does it? It's something about gag reflexes, isn't it? You train your gag reflex to be suppressed, I think. Absolutely. That's exactly how she does it. In fact, also, it's an optical illusion

that I am drawing the sword out of her mouth. What happens is she puts the sword down her throat and then you hold the end of the sword and she then moves her face away. So she is doing the movement. But from the audience point of view, it looks as if you are drawing the sword out. I'm giving away a bit of a secret there.

And she lies on a bed of nails and then invites the largest man in Edinburgh, preferably wearing a kilt, to stand on top of her. And it's phenomenal. But the point is that it's every kind of entertainment here from high grade. I mean, we saw, my wife Michelle is with me here, we went to see a play by Goldoni, the great Italian playwright, an 18th century play, performed at 10.30 in the morning in an old Masonic Hall where Robert Burns was a member of the Freemasons Hall. And I sat in the chair that Robert Burns had once sat in.

So you get that at one end. At the other end, you get later in the day when I'm performing, Frank Skinner is on the stage. So you get well-known comedians. You get up-and-coming comedians. It's just a joy. And what is so brilliant about the people in Edinburgh is they're so accepting. I first came here as a student, you know, 55 years ago, just to come and watch the shows. And I loved it then. I remember seeing some wonderful Shakespeare that was done as part of the real festival, and then some very amusing sort of cabaret and

satirical reviews as part of the fringe. But I came here first as a performer about 25 years ago, when I lost my seat as a member of parliament. And somebody said to me, go up to Scotland, they don't know what a conservative is up there. Then nobody will have anything against you, because they won't realize who you are. And you can start afresh. And I came up here with a show called Zip. We did 100 musicals in 100 minutes. And we were given such a warm welcome by people who came without prejudice. They thought, well, here's the turn. Let's like it or not like it.

And they seemed to love it. And so every year I've come back, well, not every year, but every few years I've come back. And this is, well, fifth, sixth, seventh time I've been back with a show that you can guess the title of because I'm illustrating it now. It's called Giles Brandreth Can't Stop Talking. So I recommend the festival warmly to anybody and everyone. Giles and I, I think it's worth pointing out to the purple people that because you're in Edinburgh, miles away,

we have a slight delay on our line. So in order not to interrupt each other, I am putting my hands up as though I am in class. And I've just waved my hand in the air, which is absolutely fine. But it, as I say, reminded me of being in school. But also I was doing it when you were saying Giles Brandreth can't stop talking, which seemed a little bit ironic. But I just did want to say that a lot of people have been saying in recent years that the fringe is losing a little bit of its appeal for those who really started out, those who really kind of start out, I suppose, at the festival. So, you know, there's some incredibly famous people who did, you know, come from absolutely nowhere

and use the Edinburgh Festival Festival or at least the Edinburgh Festival gave them their fame or an opportunity to kind of showcase themselves. Robin Williams and Steve Coogan and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But there's a sense now, I think, that certainly renting apartments or renting somewhere to stay is so exorbitant that actually it's becoming more attractive to established people rather than those who really need it in order to have a platform, which is really sad. Do you get a sense that it is losing some of that personality because of the prices? No is the truthful answer, but yes is certainly what people are saying, what people have been writing about in the papers. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who indeed believes that her phenomenon of fleabag wouldn't

have seen the light of day if the Edinburgh Festival Fringe hadn't existed. She is now the honorary president of the Fringe Society. And she began not that long ago, 2013 in Cowgate, that's where her show began. And that sort of thing does still happen. You are completely correct that the costs are frightening. Getting accommodation is a challenge. People do still find a way. There are university rooms that people use. And some of the young people I have met have not been staying in Edinburgh, but have been staying on the fringes of Edinburgh and commuting in every day to do their show. So yes, there are challenges there, but there still seem to me to be a huge number

of brilliant new talents, not just new talents from this country, but also internationally. For example, I met a fabulous Indian comedian called Urooj, who is huge in India, 2 million followers in India. But she came over, she's doing a show here, and she's never performed in Britain before. She comes from Mumbai. And she said it's so funny, because what she does in Mumbai is considered quite daring, quite shocking, that, you know, she does taboo subjects in India. She got up and began talking about divorce to a room full of people whose parents were divorced. So it wasn't shocking to them at all. So it's truly international.

There are a lot of young people here. I think what has changed a bit is there may be less theater than there was. There's a lot of individuals. In the old days, there was much more drama, but that is expensive to bring a set, musicians, performers, team things. Maybe there are a few of those, but it's still, in my view, pretty fantastic. I wouldn't worry too much. But let's get on to the language of

the fringe. I mean, actually, where does the word fringe come from? Is it a haircut? What is a fringe? It's interesting. I was just considering this morning how many words in English come from the idea of clothing. And we've talked about this a little bit before. And this is one of them. I mean, just the one I was particularly thinking of was succinct. And succinct goes back to the Latin under the belt, because in Roman times, citizens who would wear their flowing white togas would tuck them up into their belts in order to stop them sweeping the dirty streets.

So something succinct is kind of tucked in. And then we have texting people, which is a sibling of textiles because we weave our words, like we weave our fabrics, which I love. But fringe is on the outskirts. It did begin with a clothing sense and it simply goes back to a Latin word meaning shreds, really. So I think it was the sort of the edging of hair or fibres on an animal or plant or a border on fabric. But one of a huge family of words that originated there. Also, given that we are a language podcast, what immediately came to my mind when you said a cappella and the group of students from Oxford

is the lovely, lovely origin of a cappella, which you may remember. Do you remember that one? Well, is it? I mean, obviously what it is, it's people singing without accompaniment. A cappella is a chapel, isn't it? It is.

And do you remember where chapel comes from? Oh, Lord, no. Tell me. No, it's where chapel itself comes from. So you're absolutely right. So capella means chapel. To sing a capella is in the manner of the chapel. In other words, it's unaccompanied really by instrumentation. But chapel itself is gorgeous because that capella, originally in Latin, meant little cloak. This might ring bells now. So it goes back to the legend of St. Martin of Tours, who met a half-clad or almost naked beggar on the freezing streets. He was an ancient Roman soldier, I think. And he took out his sword and he cut his cloak in half

so that he could give one half to this freezing beggar. And in some versions of the story, that night, Jesus appeared to him in a dream saying that he was the beggar and thanking St. Martin for helping him. And St. Martin's half of that cloak, that capella, that little cloak, was then, after his death, kept in a shrine as a holy relic. And the idea of a sanctuary for something holy then moved from the little cloak to the building itself. And we get Capella, little cloak, but actually then the meaning of a chapel, which I think is just gorgeous. I absolutely love that story. It's very charming. Completely unrelated to the Edinburgh Fringe, apart from your students singing a cappella? Well, I am in Edinburgh, which is sometimes known as Old Rikki. I mean, it's a city of

extraordinary culture. It's actually, did you know this? It's a UNESCO city of literature recognized internationally because of the number of extraordinary authors who hail from Edinburgh. Old Rikki, A-U-L-D, Rikki, R-E-E-K-I-E. They say, oh, an Old Rikie? What's that got to do with Edinburgh? What's the origin of that? Well, I think it would translate as Old Smoky. And that was a reference to all the smoke pollution and the smog and the sort of rich, ripe sense of, I think the name actually goes back to the 17th century. So we're not talking medieval here, but I think it's just a reference to a kind of smoky city and very tall buildings, quite sort of narrow streets where the kind of smoke and the fog perhaps linger.

So it's a lovely, really resonant term, isn't it? And Edinburgh itself, its site was first named as Castle Rock for obvious reasons, because its castle lies up on that gorgeous rock and you can look up to it from so many places in the city. But Edinburgh itself, we think, goes back to, well, if you look back to Old English, it would mean Edwin's Fort. And this would be the 7th century King Edwin of Northumbria. And the Burg bit you'll find in lots of place names. And that means a sort of fortified place, really a fortress or somewhere that is kind of protected. So that's where we think Edinburgh itself comes from. Well, what's interesting about Edinburgh,

as you rightly say, it's on highs, there are these rocks, there's the castle up there on the hill, and there are lows as well. And people sometimes think of Robert Louis Stevenson, who created Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in those murky Edinburgh streets, with there being people leading double lives, the grand life and the more murky life. And I think, when I think of the Edinburgh of the Victorian times, of the fog, the smoke, and the amazing myths that were created by the great Scottish writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, who created Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, J.M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan. These

extraordinary mythic figures created 120 years ago that still live. There is a fantastic atmosphere, I think, in Edinburgh. Are there any other Edinburgh words that you want to tell us a little bit about their origins? Well, we have Arthur's Seat, famously. And yeah, that's associated with lots of different legends. So we actually, truth be known, we don't really know where it came from. So some people say it's a corruption of a Scots word meaning the height of arrows. So it would be kind of archer's seat because of the view that it affords. And then that over time was corrupted to Arthur's seat. Some say it means place on the high ground. So Arthur's seat, no one quite knows who Arthur is.

Could be King Arthur. Lots of legends around, you know, to do with him as well. Arthur's Seat is a place that people climb up to. We should explain if you're coming from around the world and you want to see Arthur's Seat. It's not an individual. I mean, I have a friend here who's often here called Arthur Smith. And I think he danced at a show called Arthur's Seat,

where basically he showed you his bottom. But Arthur's Seat is actually a celebrated vantage point that people climb up to enjoy the view across Edinburgh. I have never been up to Arthur's Seat. Robert Louis Stevenson apparently said it was a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design. But it's in Holyrood Park, isn't it? And although we pronounce it Holyrood, it has got that holy in it. And rood was actually an old English term for a cross. In fact, it was our standard term for a cross before the Latin cross came in. And Holyrood is a Christian relic, isn't it?, alleged to be part of the true cross upon which Jesus died? Greyfriars Bobby is a little statue of a dog,

and I do pass this every day. I've been up to the castle. I went to see the wonderful military tattoo, which was fantastic. I've not this year been up to Arthur's seat. I am going out to Leith, which I love going to because of that famous tongue twister, the Leith police dismisseth us. But Greyfriars Bobby, I pass the statue every day and it's outside a pub and I can't remember what the story is. And there's always so many crowds around the statue. I've not read the inscription. Do you know the story of Great Rise, Bobby? Yeah, it's a beautiful story. And it's said that Bobby was a terrier who in 19th century

Edinburgh became famous because he, I think it was he, spent 14 years guarding the grave of his owner until his owner died in 1872. And really well-known story. There's a commemorative statue, as you say. I think he might even be buried nearby. I'm not sure, but it's gorgeous. Greyfriars Bobby. I'm sure also there will be ghostly tales attached to this because I imagine that Edinburgh is rife

with wonderful tales of hauntings and spectral apparitions. Do you know any of them? I don't. I would love to. I mean, I want to believe in ghosts and I want to believe in friendly ghosts. Look, we must take a break. When we come back, we've got so much to discuss. We're really should do a Scottish episode because have we ever talked about kilts and spottons and maybe a thistle? Everywhere I go, I see a thistle. So maybe you can tell us about the word thistle after the break. Losing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy a room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express.

Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Hello, I'm Elizabeth Day. You might know me as the creator and host of the How to Fail podcast, but I want to tell you about a new podcast I've made. How to Write a Book is for anyone who wants to get their story out there. Fronted by a best-selling author, a super agent, and a powerhouse publisher,

this 12-week masterclass will take you right through from developing an idea to nailing the plot. If you want to get all episodes at once and completely ad-free, subscribe now. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm in Edinburgh. Susie's in Oxford. Susie, you'll be excited to know that in my audience the other day for my show, there was somebody who had purple hair.

And I saw her in the street afterwards and she said, I'm a purple person. I've got purple hair. I'm a purple hair. And I saw her in the street afterwards, and she said, I'm a purple person. I've got purple hair. I'm a purple person. And she and her partner are regular listeners to the podcast, which is fantastic. Tell me, please, if you would, about the word thistle. It's almost the emblematic plant of Scotland, isn't it? It is, yes. So thistle itself, it's of Germanic origin. In German, I think it's called distel, D-I-S-T-E-L, but absolutely emblematic. And we're not quite sure why, but one legend has it that a sleeping party of Scots warriors was saved from ambush by an invading Viking army when one of the enemies trod on the spiky plant, which anyone, as anyone will know, who's brushed up against a thistle would be extremely painful and second

only to treading on a piece of Lego. And the idea is that the cry of the person who trod on it roused the sleeping Scots who then vanquished the invader and so adopted the thistle as their national symbol. No evidence to support the account, but it's a lovely one. The thistle became a royal symbol on coinage issued by James III in 1470. And there is a Latin motto of the order of the thistle, nemo me impune laxessit, which means no one attacks me with impunity, which is a bit threatening, isn't it? So yeah, so the thistle, as you say, gorgeous, gorgeous plant. I passed quite a lot of them yesterday, actually, although I wasn't in Edinburgh, but they are absolutely beautiful.

Let's do another week, a special Scottish episode, and we can discuss kilts and spottums and all of that. I think also looking at the language of Scots would be absolutely wonderful, because one of my favourite resources online is the dictionaries of the Scots language, and it's given me some of my all-time favorites. So I think that's a lovely idea. Yes. Let's do a special episode on Scotland, on Scottish words, kilts, sporns, the like. A challenge for you, Susie, before we have our correspondence, can you say two tongue twisters, one, the Leith police dismisseth us, Leith being a part of Edinburgh. And the next one will be six thick thistles. Try and say both of those in quick succession.

The Leith police dismisseth us. The Leith police dismisseth us. That's very good. And six thick thistles, six thick thistles six thick thistles i can do that one the leaf police dismisses us yay just once well you've done quite well i think they are two of the most challenging tongue twisters in the world anyway i'm in edinburgh suzy's in oxford but our listeners are around the world they get in touch with us via our new email address, which is purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Somethingrhymes, one word, dot com. Purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. And I say all over the world.

I think our first message comes to us from, well, Paul Vander, who is in the United States of America. Dear Susie and Giles, recently my friend described a footballer's assist as sick, which prompted another friend to ask when he started using words with negative connotations like sick as a way to describe something that is actually great. His question piqued my interest, and I'm wondering if this is a phenomenon that has recently popped up in slang, or if it has a long history in English. I think I recall Susie saying she likes the idea of being called wicked. So I just want to say Something Rhymes with Purple is a Wicked Sick podcast with Wicked Sick hosts. Fondly, Purple Paul Vander from the US. That's great. That's truly sick. Okay,

tell us all about this, Susie. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'm sure I did say that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes, I'm sure I did say that. Okay, well, sick, meaning good, is an example of what linguists sometimes call semantic inversion, which is a posh way of saying that, as you can tell, a word flips its meaning, and it's particularly used for words of disapproval that then become words of approval. And sick is one of those. And that's first recorded in 1983 in this sense. And first of all, it was, I think actually now it's really particularly used in skateboarding and surfing, but originally it was more general. And the first example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the campus slang of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. And it says, sick, unbelievably good.

The Fleetwood Mac concert was sick. Now, the question is really, as with Wicked, why do we do this? Well, we do it because slang rejoices in rebellion. So it is all about subverting expectations, being unpredictable. That's what slang loves to do. As we know, Giles, because we've talked about this, slang is one of the oldest categories of language ever to be collected. So we tend to think of it as a very modern phenomenon, but no. Slang has been around, particularly tribal slang and the slang associated with various communities, particularly the criminal underworld, for example, for centuries. We need slang because we need that area to go to when we want to be rebellious, when we want to go off the standard path for all sorts of reasons, whether we want

to belong to a group, whether we just want to be informal, but it is a really important unifying language. So the oldest example that I can think of, but there will be many more, and I think it would make a fantastic research subject for me. But one of the oldest I can think of is cool, because hot as an adjective of approval, you know, you kind of get that if something is hot, it's sort of got energy, it's sort of, it's kind of buzzing, you associate heat with that kind of, you know, just sort of bubbliness, I suppose. But cool, less so. So why did cool come to mean trendy or really fantastic or, you know, be one of those other adjectives of approval? And the very first example that we have of that is actually from the 19th century in public school English slang, where cool began to be used as the flip side of hot, but meaning the

same thing. So it didn't mean if something was hot, if something was cool, it was unfashionable, unattractive, undesirable. It actually meant the same thing. So that's one of the earliest examples I can think of. But I'm going to search for more because I have a feeling that we have been doing this and slang has been doing this for a very long time, but it's a fantastic question from Paul. Very intriguing. Well, I hope, Paul, you learned something there. I certainly did. We've got another letter now. This comes to us from Ian Roger, and he writes, Dear Susie and Giles, I'm writing to see if you can solve a problem for me. Many years ago, I worked in Saudi Arabia. When I left, one of the Saudis who worked for me asked me when I was coming back. I replied, I was going for good.

And his reply was, what is good about it? As he was sad that I was leaving. In the years since, I've tried to find out the origins of this phrase without success. Isn't that interesting? Kind regards, Ian Roger. What do you make of that? Going for good. Going forever.

But why is it for good? Yes. And it's interesting, they have this in other languages as well. In French, it's pour le bon. Same thing, for good. So it means permanently for a final time, once and for all. Obviously, it recorded since the 15th century. So it's been around for a very long time. But we think it's a shortening, even though this is recorded a tiny bit later, we're only talking about decades. And when it comes to so long ago, it's a shortening, even though this is recorded a tiny bit later, we're only talking about decades. And when it comes to so long ago, it's just highly likely we haven't found the printed records yet that would give the correct sequence. But we think it's a shortening of for good and all as a sort of sign off.

good and all, the earliest example that we have so far, 1520, they desired the birds greet and small to mew the hawk for good and all. And the idea is simply less to do with good meaning positive, but just, it's really hard to actually explain this in specific terms without using the term for good, but it just is a wrap up. You said to me, for good and all is the way that you would sort of wrap up. It's a bit like happily ever after, when actually, you know, that holds a multitude of emotions and events. But yeah, used as a sign of since the 15th century, and for good and all eventually became for good. But it's a slightly different sense there. And it's interesting that we're talking about good here, given that we've been talking about wicked and sick after Paul's question,

because good is the most frequently used adjective of commendation in English and is one of the most common adjectives in all periods from Old English to the present day. So it's unsurprising that it has slipped into many an expression and has become quite versatile as a result. We learned so much from you and indeed from the interesting questions from our listeners. So do please keep in touch with us. Do you have a trio of interesting words to tantalize us with this week? Do I have a trio? I always do have a trio. Okay. So the very first word that I have for you is what has a lovely definition. It's the love of parents towards their children, recorded in 1656. And it's philo, which we know is from the Greek for loving. So that's why we get logophile and dendrophile, tree lover, et cetera, from philostorgy, S-T-O-R-G-I-E, philostorgy. And as it is simply parental love. And I agree with all the silent protests that are

coming from the purple listeners that it's not something that would stick in the mind but I just love the fact that there is a term for this natural affection it's very rare and is unlikely to be sort of picked up but yeah it's just family affection I think that's really beautiful so that's my first one for you the second one is well I just think this is quite useful as well. Much as happy-fy is a word that I use often to make happy. So I'm really happy-fied by this. There is a similar word, which is far more negative, to make something nasty or to deliver something in a nasty way is to nastify it. To nastify. I just think that's quite pithy and quite useful. And the second, not sure if you are this, Giles. I don't think you are

because you do something different every day. Again, simply useful because it's very succinct. A routineer. And a routineer is someone who lives according to a routine. Is that you? No, not a routineer. I ought to be more of a routineer because I know, for example, if you go to bed at the same time, you sleep better. And unfortunately, for example, I go to bed at very different times. Sometimes I'm lucky and I get to bed at 10 or 10 30. Other times, while I've been in Edinburgh, I've been sometimes getting to bed at one in the morning and you break your routine. So I wish I were a routinier. But I like your beautify.

Okay. One for the aspirationalist. No, it is. It is. Form a routine. Happify. Happify is good. I want a happify.

It's like beautify, isn't it? I mean, it's the same idea. Yes, it is. And it's, yeah, I just like the if I suffix because you can attach it to almost anything and get to where you want to go. So that's my trio for today. How about a poem? Is it time for me then to poetify? Is that what I'm going to do? If I read you a poem, or am I poemifying you? I don't know. We talked about, we mentioned in passing, Robert Louis Stevenson, one of my heroes.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an extraordinary concept as a novel. Treasure Island is one of the great, if not greatest, adventure stories ever written. But Robert Louis Stevenson also wrote some completely enchanting poems aimed at young people, but I think they work for people of all ages. And one of my favorites, talking about going to bed at the same time and getting a good night's sleep, sleep is a wonderful thing. And this is a poem by him called The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson, one of the great Scottish poets. From breakfast on through all the day, at home among my friends I stay. But every night I go abroad, afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, with none to tell me what to do.

All alone beside the streams and up the mountainsides of dreams, the strangest things are these for me, both things to eat and things to see, and many frightening sights abroad till morning in the land of Nod. Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, nor can remember plain and clear the curious music that I hear. So that's the land of Nod. But it's interesting, he makes it rhyme with abroad. Of course, he may have spoken with a Scottish accent. But every night I go abroad, afar, into the land of Nod.

Maybe that's how it, abroad, Nod. Maybe that's how they rhyme. Why is the land of Nod called the land of Nod? So it's called, well, so the land of Nod was in the Bible. So Nod was actually unrelated to sleep, really. It was a place name, wasn't it? I think in Genesis. But because when we nod off, when we sleep, our head lulls, it became associated with a state of sleep. So, the original biblical reference had nothing to do with sleep as far as

I know. Very good. Well, thank you for all of that. And look, if you've enjoyed the show, please do continue to follow us wherever it is, you know, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon, wherever you get your podcasts. And do recommend us to friends and family. And for more Purple, actually, there's also the Purple Plus Club, where you get ad-free listening and a few exclusive bonus episodes on words and language. Yes. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Dio with additional production from Nemi Oyiku, Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, and with us today, the brilliant Richie.

I want to see him in a kilt. I'm not sure he'd want to see himself in a kilt. We'll ask.